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We Need a New Batman

The source material we've been basing Batman stories on for the last 30 years doesn't depict the Batman we need, or deserve, anymore.

If Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice does anything with clear, unassailable certainty, it's making Batman look like a cool, unstoppable tank of a man. Zack Snyder's Batman is so good at wrecking dudes that even the people who he saves (and there are only two in this movie) are scared of him. Zack Snyder's Batman kicks the snot out of Superman, because Batman is badass and Superman is candy-ass, and nigh-invulnerable goody two-shoes characters are corny and should literally stand trial for being boring and powerful.

There are compelling reasons for Batman's viewpoint in Batman v Superman, but there's a slight problem: Its version of Batman is boring at best, and at worst, irrelevant.

The Batman Ben Affleck plays in Batman v Superman is heavily influenced by the character's portrayal in Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley's seminal graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. Published in 1986, it's a story that sees Bruce Wayne, now fifty years old and ten years retired, returning to his cowl to clean up a Gotham that has become overrun by freakish thugs called Mutants and stick it to heroes like Superman, who has essentially become a government stooge in the interest of not making things any worse than they already are.

The 1986 publication of The Dark Knight Returns is unequivocally the moment where "dark and gritty" superhero stories arrived, and it's widely regarded as one of the greatest graphic novels ever made. As such, it has become the most oft-cited source material for modern Batman stories. Almost every film version of Batman has some aspect of The Dark Knight Returns in its DNA, and so do many Batman comics. Batman v Superman, however, is the closest thing there is to a straight-up screen adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns, with scenes and lines lifted directly from the graphic novel and a plot that hews closely to Miller's as well.

The crime of Miller's Gotham was simple, nasty stuff. Things are more complicated now.

But The Dark Knight Returns is also a work of its time, as much a Robocop-esque satire of media pundits and moral panic as it is a pivot back towards the character's pulpy, dark roots. Whether or not it's dated is open for argument, but it certainly doesn't resonate quite the same way when viewed from a modern lens.

The crime of Miller's Gotham was simple, nasty stuff: Thugs and gangs enacted chaos all over a city that viscerally reacted to the presence of Batman. It was a snarling work made in a city that was still mean, where anxieties about urban life were more straightforward. Things have gotten more complicated now. Fears of random violence on a grander scale abound, and societal tensions between class and race are pronounced in ways they haven't been in decades. These are things Miller's Batman is poorly equipped to handle.

Funny story, though: For the past five years, other Batman comics have been doing exactly that.

Since 2011, writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo have been telling Batman stories steeped in the concerns and anxieties of living in a modern city. For fifty issues, they've been telling a grand, sweeping superhero story that doubles as a new thesis on Batman and why he exists. Their take is subtly different and quietly radical, rooted in the idea that cities have changed and so must Batman.

The big villains of the Snyder/Capullo stories aren't mobsters and colorful deviants; they're the Court of Owls, a secret society of the elite who have manipulated Gotham whilst remaining nothing but a nursery rhyme in the public consciousness; they're the Red Hood Gang, an anarchic group of upper-and-middle class citizens coerced into donning masks and inciting violent chaos; they're Bloom, a monster of mad science produced by a man who wants to arm his entire city with superpowers and is shocked by the chaos that comes from that. And also the Joker, I guess.

In response, the Batman of the Snyder/Capullo stories isn't a boogeyman in the night. He's an aspirational counterpoint to the dangers that can spring forth anywhere, from injustice that seems so much bigger than a single mugger or madman.

"What do you love about the city, Bruce?" Snyder asks in the very first issue of Zero Year, an audacious re-telling of Batman's origin that's as brazen as it is brilliant. It's a question at the core of every story Snyder and Capullo tell: What is Gotham, and why are you here? This place will try you—will you let it turn you into something scared or something brave?

Once, Batman was about how a man could rise above tragedy to make a difference, to put an end to senseless men with guns who might rob little boys of their parents. But maybe we need a little more, now. Our cities are safer, but the world is frightening, and we can't hide from it. Fear is easy, and has found its ways into places bigger and brighter than the dark alleys and dead ends of our cities. Living in spite of that fear is hard.

"The story of Batman is, and always will be, a tragedy," Batman's faithful butler Alfred says at the very end of Endgame—the story that signals the end of Snyder and Capullo's run, which will conclude with next month's Batman #51. "But it's also his greatest strength ... He says, we're in this together. He says, live bravely in the time you have, and smile at the void."